Robert Radford

Edit links
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

For the English football player, see Robert Radford (footballer).
Robert Radford
Robert Radford, circa 1925
Born13 May 1874 Edit this on Wikidata
Died3 March 1933 Edit this on Wikidata (aged 58)

Robert Radford (13 May 1874,

bass singer who made his career entirely in the United Kingdom, participating in concerts and becoming one of the foremost performers of oratorios and other sacred music. He had equally great success in a broad spectrum of operatic roles, ranging from Wagner to Gilbert and Sullivan
, due to the strength and burnished beauty of his well-trained voice.

Early career

Even as a young man, Radford possessed a deep and resonant voice. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, mainly under the conductor Alberto Randegger, but also received lessons from Battison Haynes and Frederic King. He had natural dramatic gifts which from the outset suggested an operatic career, but his early professional life was devoted particularly to oratorio and the concert platform.[2]

Concert and oratorio, 1899–1915

His debut was at the Norwich Music Festival in 1899.[3] He appeared for Henry J. Wood at a Queen's Hall prom on 9 February 1900 in Arthur Sullivan's The Martyr of Antioch.[4] He was also a soloist at Wood's Trafalgar Day Centenary Concert of 21 October 1905 (at which Wood's Fantasia on British Sea-Songs was first performed).[5] In 1906 he became the principal bass soloist in the Handel Festival concerts at the Crystal Palace, and remained so until the 1920s.[6]

On 26 May 1911, he took part in the Sheffield Festival Chorus performance of J. S. Bach's Mass in B minor for the London Music Festival, with Agnes Nicholls, Edna Thornton, Ben Davies and others; on the following day he was with Gervase Elwes and others in the big Leeds Choral Union performance of the St Matthew Passion. He was also in the Leeds Chorus performance of the Mass in B minor, with Carrie Tubb, John Coates and others, in the 'Three B's' Festival' of April 1915, again at Queen's Hall, under Henri Verbrugghen with the London Symphony Orchestra.[7]

Operatic career before 1914

As early as November 1900, Henry Wood had engaged Radford for his uncut performance at Nottingham of the first two acts of

Ring cycle in 1908, taking the roles of Fasolt in Das Rheingold, Hunding in Die Walküre,[10] and (according to another source) Hagen in Götterdämmerung.[11] In 1910 he joined the Denhof Opera Company
.

He was then engaged with the Grand Opera Syndicate at the

London Choral Society, Carrie Tubb, John Coates, Thorpe Bates and Dawson Freer).[12]

First recordings, 1903–1914

Oh, better far to live and die
"Oh, better far to live and die" from The Pirates of Penzance, recorded 1920, with Radford singing the role of the Pirate King
Problems playing this file? See media help.

Radford had an early and successful relationship with the gramophone, beginning with a song called 'Ho! ho! hear the wild winds blow' for the

Scipio), 'Honour and Arms', 'Arm, arm ye brave' (Judas Maccabaeus) (Handel), 'Arise ye subterranean winds' (Purcell), and many of the better and longer ballads of the time.[13] He recorded the standard bass and tenor duets ('Larboard Watch', 'The Gendarmes', 'Excelsior', 'The moon hath raised her lamp above', and 'Watchman, what of the night'?) with John Harrison, and also recorded English songs in quartette arrangements (e.g., Pearsall's 'O, who will o'er the downs so free?') with John Harrison, Maud Perceval Allen or Alice Lakin, and Edna Thornton.[14]

After the First World War

Radford continued to record from time to time during the

Little Billing for the occasion.[19]

In 1920–22, he became a founder Director of the

Haydn) and in the Handel oratorios.[24]

Radford is said to have suffered from ill-health all his life, and it was this handicap which prevented him from developing his career on the international scene.[10] A photograph of him (but no account of his career) is shown by Michael Scott in his important survey The Record of Singing.[25] He is the subject, too, of a brief story in Peter Dawson's autobiography.[26]

Notes

  1. ^ H. Rosenthal and J. Warrack, Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera (London 1974 impression), 327).
  2. ^ G. Davidson, Opera Biographies (Werner Laurie, London 1955), 236–238); see also Eaglefield-Hull 1924 (below).
  3. ^ Arthur Eaglefield Hull, A Dictionary of Modern Music and Musicians (Dent, London 1924), 403.
  4. ^ H.J. Wood, My Life of Music (Gollancz, London 1946 edn), 137–138).
  5. ^ Wood 1946, 190–191.
  6. ^ Eaglefield-Hull, 1924.
  7. ^ R. Elkin, Queen's Hall 1893–1941 (Rider, London 1944), 77.
  8. ^ Wood 1946, 147.
  9. ^ Davidson 1955, 237; Rosenthal & Warrack 1974.
  10. ^ a b c Davidson 1955.
  11. ^ a b Rosenthal & Warrack 1974.
  12. ^ Elkin 1944, 64. His (English) Gurnemanz appears in highlights recorded under Albert Coates, with Walter Widdop and Percy Hemming (Amfortas).
  13. ^ J. R. Bennett, A Catalogue of Vocal recordings from the English catalogue of the Gramophone Company etc, (Oakwood Press, 1955).
  14. ^ Bennett 1955: see also The Catalogue of 'His Master's Voice' Records up to and including November 1914 (Butcher, Curnow & Co, Blackheath 1914), 109–110.
  15. ^ Wood 1946, 302.
  16. ^ P. Dawson, Fifty Years of Song (Hutchinson, London 1951), p. 126.
  17. ^ Bennett 1955.
  18. ^ R. Elkin, Royal Philharmonic (Rider, London 1946), 146.
  19. ^ W. & R. Elwes, Gervase Elwes, The Story of his Life (Grayson and Grayson, London 1935), 265.
  20. ^ Eaglefield-Hull 1924; Davidson 1955; Rosenthal & Warrack 1974.
  21. ^ Elkin 1946, 153, 154.
  22. ^ Opera at Home (Gramophone Company, London 1927 Revised edition), 356–380.
  23. ^ Opera at Home 1927, 252–265.
  24. ^ Eaglefield-Hull 1924.
  25. ^ M. Scott, The Record of Singing II (Duckworth, London 1979), p.181 fig. 133.
  26. ^ Dawson 1951, 208–209.

External links

  • Brief biographical notice with photo [1]
  • Six portraits of Robert Radford in NPG [2]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robert_Radford&oldid=1220539715"